


Something Better

by shinychimera



Series: Repairs [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Child Abuse, Childhood, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-02
Updated: 2010-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-13 01:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Kirk understands how the world works. A ficlet in the <i><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/130265/chapters/185444">In for Repairs</a></i> universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Better

**Author's Note:**

> Beta, as always, by the wondrous Yeomanrand.

Jimmy spat into his stepfather's face, fully expecting the return blow that sprang blood from his lip. The kitchen at the back of the house was small and silent around them in the mid-afternoon light, except for their heavy breathing and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Frank when he was drunk might be inescapable, and Frank when he was angry might be too single-minded to feel any hurt, but that didn't mean eight-year-old Jimmy ever gave up on fighting back. Until he was pinned or pounded too flat to move, he didn't stop kicking and biting, spitting and cussing. Frank knew it, Frank expected it, and there were days Jimmy thought that maybe if he could stop fighting back, Frank just might stop coming back for more. But when the time came around again, when the bottle was empty and the need to know he was still in charge was raging full-steam in Frank's head, Jimmy never could bring himself to just let the fists rain down.

He didn't run. There was nowhere for him to go.

Frank's hand closed on his throat, and blood dripped from Jimmy's nose and chin onto the patterned floor of the kitchen. He glared silently back at Frank, daring him to go further — and then the distinctive sound of his mother's car growled up the dirt drive. Frank started, swore, snatched a kitchen towel off the rack and thrust it into Jimmy's face.

"Get upstairs and hide, _now_ ," he hissed, grabbing for the sonic mop that might, maybe, get the floor clean in time, before her heavy boots sounded on the front steps and the door banged open. Jimmy fled, jamming the towel up painfully against his mouth and nose so no drop of blood could escape as he raced up the back stairs.

"God _damn_ Nogura," he heard her say bitterly. Frank's voice was more indistinct, questioning in tone.

"Fuck them — I left early. He turned down my goddamn transfer request."

His heart still pounding, Jimmy reached the second floor and their words faded, but her shouting continued. He had to stay out of her sight until Frank could fix him up. His room and Sam's room were out, the master bedroom wasn't even a consideration, the library where she had her telescope set up in the window was too open. He really only had one choice: his mother's musty office, with the drawn curtains and the computer she barely used.

Jimmy wiped his hand carefully on the dangling end of the towel, then eased the old-fashioned doorknob open and slid into the room, closing the door silently behind him. He slowly opened the closet door, stopping before it hit the squeaky part of the track, and ducked under the hems of the rows of red and gold shirts and folded black pants to sit in the narrow spot between the safe and the pairs of polished black boots. When the door was closed, only a dim line of light showed near the floor.

He leaned his head against the back wall of the closet, picking up enough of the buzzing tones of the argument downstairs to know she wasn't coming his way, so Jimmy settled in to wait in the close, warm space. He adjusted the towel with the cheery farm wife print on it so that he could breathe a little easier through his mouth, and probed at his lip lightly with his tongue: split on the outside, cut against his teeth on the inside. Not too bad. He tried to leave it alone and let it clot, but his tongue kept coming back to the cut inside his mouth, making the blood and the pain well up again and again. Real blood, real pain, for a little while anyway.

He didn't know how long he sat there in the dark before he heard her climbing the stairs, and he didn't wonder where she was going, just listened numbly as she — of course — came into the office. He knew she wouldn't open the closet, though; she had no interest in old uniforms, or the holo albums and medals in the safe.

Instead, she turned the computer on, and put through a request to speak to Admiral Nogura, which became increasingly demanding with each level of bureaucracy she climbed past. After a longish stretch of bland music, Jimmy had to blink a bit, hearing a live voice that he associated with press vids and educational tapes.

"Commander Kirk. It's an honor to speak to you."

"Admiral Nogura, you know what you can do with your honor." Jimmy's eyes widened in the darkness.

The old man sighed. "I'm trying to do what's best for you and your family, Commander. We owe you so much."

" _I'm_ the best judge of what's good for my family. Do you think I haven't thought this through. I've spent the last eight years of my life chained to this rock. I need to get back _out there_ if I'm ever going to find any peace."

"I've told you before that Spacedock would be delighted to have you, and you'd still be close enough to home —"

"I'm not a repair drone, Admiral, I'm an engineer! I belong on a living ship, something that hums and throbs and soars. Building a shipyard here is not enough, and neither is Spacedock."

"We're talking about five years, Winona....what about your family?"

"My sons..." Her voice broke in a familiar way and it was all Jimmy could do not to drop the towel and cover his ears. "My sons will be better off with Frank than they ever have been with me."

"Winona...."

She sniffed angrily. She hated to cry.

"It's true. I'm dead inside and the older they get the more they know it, the more it affects them. Sam struggles all the time at school and Jimmy... Jimmy... he deserves something better than I can give him. Frank has promised to take care of them while I'm away. If you don't put me on the _Yorktown_ , or some other ship, I _will_ resign my commission and join a commercial fleet."

Jimmy tasted fresh blood. His teeth tore at his lips in silence.

"The _Yorktown_ is leaving on a five-year mission, Winona. Are you absolutely sure that's what you want?"

"I don't want it, Heihachiro, I need it. Please." The voice was high and strained. It didn't sound like his mother at all. She was already gone.

A pause. "You would need to be fit..."

"I'm sober now, damn it! I've got my head on straight — I don't need your damn shrinks just because I'm not behaving like some noble storybook widow."

Jimmy strained his ears hearing nothing, until the old man heaved another sigh. "I'll forward your request to Captain Randolph, Commander. The decision will be up to him."

"Thank you, Admiral. Thank you."

She signed off, sat for a few minutes, doing nothing that Jimmy could hear. Then she cleared her throat, stood, left the room. Her boots echoed down the hallway to the master bedroom.

Jimmy stayed in the dark, stifling closet for another hour and a half, until she and Frank had argued each other hoarse and the blood on his face and the towel had gone from sticky to crackly and dry. He finally heard the front door slam, and the car roar to life, and the determined shifting of gears fading down the road until she reached escape velocity.

He crept out carefully into the darkening hall, checking out his bedroom window to be sure she and the Corvette were really gone, before he went downstairs on quiet feet. He retrieved the medkit from the hall cabinet and brought it to the living room, where Frank had cracked open another bottle.

They stared at each other across a room sinking fast into dim twilight, listening to the clock ticking in the hall.

"If you told her, she might stay," Frank said at last, voice thick and raw as Jimmy's lip.

"If I told her," Jimmy said, "she wouldn't love us anymore."

 **Σ**


End file.
